The Campaign finally erupts..

Half way through then, this looks to be one of the most exciting elections in living history. At last we may see the Labour/Conservative ‘duopoly’ on power, broken. Alex Salmond, leader of the SNP, is quite rightly embracing the idea of a ‘balanced’ parliament – and using a term that, I feel, is far more appropriate and encouraging than ‘hung’.

The Liberal Democrats have already become such an important ‘third force’ in terms of their Westminster representation that it would be futile for either Gordon Brown or David Cameron to try and form a minority administration with the intention of going to the country again nine months later (as happened in 1974). It now does not look beyond the bounds of possibility that Nick Clegg’s party could secure something approaching 100 seats on May 6th: a number that cannot be ignored by the other two or is likely to be sufficiently demolished at a subsequent election.

Despite having left the Liberal Democrats a couple of years ago, this pleases me (although I fear and dread a LibDem/Tory coalition). However, what makes me happier still, is that this all seems to be confounding the ‘old main’ parties, sadly to the extent that you can see the carefully calculated media spin emerging in a desperate attempt to smear Nick Clegg and derail the surge in his party’s support. Their annoyance would be compounded, on election day, by the picking up of seats, hopefully, by the Greens, Respect, a smattering of independents, and less hopefully, by UKIP and, perish the thought, the BNP.

The Scottish and Welsh Nationalists have consistently returned handfuls of MPs (again since 1974) and, with a few exceptions, almost every one won by them in this election will be one less for the ‘duopoly’. (For me, this has an added bonus as I consider the SNP and Plaid Cymru to be very benign centre-left parties.)

With both the Liberal Democrats and other smaller parties being strong in the next parliament, one would hope that we will see them finally able to force the issue of a Proportional Representational Electoral system which, if introduced, thankfully, would see balanced parliaments the norm rather than exception.

Desperate to grab and retain overall power, this scares the Conservatives witless and hence they are leading the campaign against a long-needed breaking up of our two-party state – ironic for a party that is supposed to champion deregulation and the widening of ‘freedom of choice’.

Ken Clarke has been scaremongering that the IMF will be called in in the event of an “indecisive result”. Well, firstly, even if the IMF is involved, which I think it won’t be, this wouldn’t be the first time it has assisted Britain, and here we still are! Secondly, it would NOT be an indecisive result, it would be a DECISIVE one – the people would have decided that they do not want any single party governing the country and they positively want to see some multi-party co-operation. Good!